Thursday, 31 October 2013

Heated Passion

I really enjoyed playing The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. First of all it
made me realise how bad Oblivion actually was and how good Morrowind
actually was. Skyrim reminded me of the joy and wonderment I felt when I
first played Morrowind all those many, many years ago. Also, in a world
full of MMORPGs it is a single player experience. Yes, I have drooled
over Final Fantasy XI and Guild Wars 2 but my heart just sinks at the
realisation I can't play it alone, by myself. It might be a personal
preference. So I enjoyed and loved playing Skyrim. I really liked the
way the character develops based on how you actually play the game. My
character is a fairly shit-hot archer and a fairly good spell caster. My
favourite spell? Summon Fire Atronach! I don't like one on one combat. I
like sneaking around shooting arrows into the backs of people's (do
Falmer count as people?) heads. Sometimes it is unavoidable so my
solution. Sneak around and summon a Fire Atronach to lay into them
instead. She has got me out of a multitude of scrapes and I absolutely
love her. To repay my love, it is only fair to do a homage to her and
her pyrotechnic ways.

Actually accomplishing this task was
surprising difficult. This final piece is my fourth attempt to get it
right. The first two attempts were technically good, but the poses I
chose just looked wrong. The less said about the third attempt the
better. Rather than be totally discouraged I decided to tackle it from a
completely different angle. I decided to do something that gave my
darling Atronach some character. Also I moved away from the idea of
having a solid black background, which was a more inspiring move as I
love the background in this work.